For many tables on Thursday, the star of the party will be a turkey and increasingly these days more of them will have led a good life -- until the end.

We the media are partly to blame. With each new story about an e-coli outbreak in mass-produced food, every revelation of some weird additive such as green slime in hamburger, more folks are trying to take control of what they eat.

Many are growing vegetables in gardens, some are really rolling up their sleeves and entering the world of backyard meat production.

Often they start with chickens for eggs. Some then take the leap to eating the hens as well, and from there some graduate to turkeys -- for Thanksgiving of course, but at other times too.

Dot Perkins is a Cooperative Extension livestock field specialist with a focus on backyard farming. She is based in Merrimac County but advises people all over the state. The trend started about five years ago and keeps growing, she said.

Those who start down this road quickly discover it’s a lot of work and definitely not cheaper than picking up a brand name frozen carcass for 59-cents a pound at your supermarket. But they do it because they’re concerned with food safety and want to be more self-sufficient as the economy gets rockier.

It’s been a trend that’s helped Hayloft Farm Supply in North Berwick, said owner Cathy McLean.

She’s supplied about 800 chicks to customers this year who are starting or re-stocking backyard hen houses. About 150 young turkeys, known as poults, have gone out the door as well.

The White Giant breed she orders for customers arrive in May or June and can go through three 50-pound bags of feed before it’s Thanksgiving. McLean figures on average you’ll spend $55 a bird before they’re a butchering weight.

This varies with the amount of time they spend foraging for wild tidbits to eat in the backyard, of course. And the reason they lead what humanitarians would consider a good life until the end.

Waddling around in the sun and air, clucking with the other birds, finding crickets and seeds and other morsels under every leaf, it’s no wonder they grow fat and happy.

“People do it because they know what they’re eating and the animal leads a better life then anything raised commercially,” explains McLean, who raises turkeys for her own family and for sale.

Chickens are one thing, turkeys entirely another.

If you take on backyard chickens and discover you’ve bonded with your birds, you can keep them around to lay eggs and grow old. Turkeys are there to make sandwiches with and if you delay the inevitable you discover they keep growing.

McLean says she’s had customers whose birds have eaten themselves into the 40-plus pound range. Not only is it expensive. When you finally do what must be done, they don’t fit into the oven.

So comes the time that few take delight in. McLean takes her birds to a commercial slaughterhouse.

Perkins, the Extension specialist, says there are different methods and nothing wrong with doing it yourself. She says the most humane for a backyard producer is the ax. A person to hold the bird and another to you-know-what works best.

Then, you should know how to properly prepare the carcass. Perkins is happy to send anyone who e-mails her a handy instruction list.

It starts with a hot water dip to loosen the feathers. Then an ice water bath to cool the body. And good information about food safety. (Contact her at dorothy.perkins@unh.edu.)

There are those who claim a bird that leads a natural life tastes better. It can be argued that properly cooked, any turkey is quite delicious. What is different about growing your own bird is you know what you’re eating. For many people that’s worth a lot.